Joel Guy Jr trial: Knoxville man accused of chopping up parents, boiling mom's head asks to be executed
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE: A man accused of allegedly chopping up his parents, boiling his mother's head in a saucepan and attempting to dissolve both their bodies in acid, has reportedly asked to be executed.
The 32-year-old man called Joel Guy Jr made the absurd request in a Knoxville, Tennessee, court on Tuesday, September 15, after he was accused of allegedly murdering his parents Joel Guy Sr, 61, and Lisa Guy, 55, in their home in 2016, reports WATE. They also shared that the Knox Country Criminal Court obtained two handwritten motions from Joel himself asking to be sentenced to death. Documents reveal the judge will be allowed to authorize death penalty should Joel be convicted of first-degree murder.
According to reports, Joel wrote: “In the event that I am eventually found guilty of first-degree murder, I contend that the waiver above, if permitted by the court, would free the court to sentence me to death, imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole or imprisonment for life, in spite of the district attorney general’s failure to satisfy the notice requirements of Rule 12.3(b)." Incidentally enough, despite his execution request Joel is yet to confess to murdering his parents, who he allegedly killed four years ago around the time of Thanksgiving. “Nothing in this filing is intended to be an admission of guilt, nor should its contents be construed as proof of consciousness of guilt," Joel added.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office estimates that the parents were killed between Friday, November 25 and Saturday, November 26, in 2016, at their home on Goldenview Lane. The bodies were found cut up, with some parts in a Tupperware. Investigators also revealed that the suspect had tried to dissolve the bodies in chemicals in an attempt to get rid of evidence. One of the decapitated heads was discovered in a saucepan, on the kitchen stove. Both the bodies had suffered vicious stab wounds along with the dismemberment.
Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy McCord labeled his findings as "the most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work – in my life," based on Knos news' reports from 2018. There was "blood everywhere... on the walls and floor," McCord had added. Prosecutors claimed Joel, who had been living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for nearly a decade, was told by his parents that he would be no longer receiving financial support. During Thanksgiving, Joel was believed to have been staying with his parents and they were killed, just a day or two after.
In the year following his parents' deaths, Joel was indicted on counts of first degree murder, abuse of a corpse and felony murder, with his trial set to begin on September 28. At the time of his arrest, at a news conference, Maj. Michael MacLean with the sheriff’s department had called the crimes 'very, very rare'. “It’s in the one percentile of homicides in the United States that involve mutilation or dismemberment. It’s not something we run across,” MacLean said. “Usually there’s a motivation behind it, in this case we just don’t know what that is.”